Tag: Steffan Vanel

As I mentioned in my May forecast, Uranus entered Taurus on the 15th for the first time in 84 years, and will remain there, with brief interludes into neighboring signs, until 2026. So clearly we are looking at a longer collective, global influence here.

Now, I always pay attention to any symbolic events which may take place at the time of an outer planet moving into a new sign as an indication of the new energy field we are moving into.

Uranus itself is the planet of sudden change out of the blue which you don’t expect. It can create ruptures and accidents, but its true purpose is to serve as a liberator from old patterns which have outlived their purpose. It was discovered in 1781, at the end of the American Revolution and on the eve of the French Revolution.

Taurus is an earth sign and there are two things I noticed relating to surprise earth changes around this time of the entry of Uranus into Taurus. One was the sudden eruption of the volcano in Hawaii.

The other took place within hours of Uranus entering Taurus last Tuesday. That was the passage of the unusually large Asteroid 2010WC9 making an unusually close flyby of the Earth. According to EarthSky.org: this was “one of the closest approaches ever observed of an asteroid of this size.”

Now Taurus is also related to money and finances and most Astrologer’s predictions are oriented towards those areas of influence, and indeed, if we look back at previous time periods in history when Uranus was in Taurus, we can see these periods did involve a lot of sudden changes in financial realities.

The most recent time periods were 1934 – 1942 – the deepening of the Great Depression, Roosevelt’s implementation of the New Deal, but also the rise of fascism and the outbreak of World War II.

1850 – 1859 – During this period there was ‘The Panic of 1857’ considered to be the world’s first worldwide economic crisis, but also an outbreak of revolutions and the spread of communist ideology in many nations in Europe.

In America, in 1884, we had the establishment of the Republican Party, whose purpose at that time was to serve as a vehicle for anti-slavery sentiments, leading to the eventual election of President Lincoln and the Civil War.

1767 – 1775 – The Industrial Revolution gets into full swing, the original Boston ‘Tea Party’ and the outbreak of the American Revolution, and, as a prelude to the anti-slavery sentiments arising in the 1850 – 1859 period; Rhode Island becomes the first state to prohibit the importation of slaves. And slavery is outlawed in Britain in this period.

I often feel, however, that most Astrologers don’t fully understand Taurus. Here is what Hilarion* says about someone born with the Sun in Taurus:

Taurus
The Taurus individual has, at the soul level, a deep understanding of the meaning of love. This is attested to by the rulership of Venus over this sign. The grasp of the right approach to love and its true meaning is again a kind of gift which the soul has given itself — in this case, as a result of an incarnation in which a self-sacrificing love was cherished for another, usually without being fully returned. This act of selfless devotion allows the soul to tap deeply into a wellspring of pure love at a very high spiritual plane, which constantly feeds into the soul a great capacity for love and affection. Again, along with the gift comes a responsibility. In the case of Taurus, the task is to learn to express the love side unconditionally, simply allowing the affection to flow into and through the personality without damming it up, and without attaching conditions to the giving of affection. If there is any damming up or restriction of the affectional impulses, a problem arises due to the desire of this abundance of love to find a suitable object. Denied an external abject, i.e. another person or persons, the love will usually lavish itself upon the individual’s own physical body with its senses the primary focus. It is from this process that the oft-quoted tendency for self-indulgence in the Taurus stems. Another difficulty can also arise if the nature of suppressive habits in the Taurus individual is such as to prevent the thwarted affectiona1 urges from expressing through self-indulgence. In such instances, it is possible for the love to center not on another individual but on possessions or money. This can occur when in the early childhood there was little physical affection shown by the parents. Thus, in the case of Taurus, the task at the personality level is to express love, without allowing the affectional urges to manifest as self-indulgence or an over-stressing of money or possessions.

So clearly the main emphasis here is that this Venus-ruled sign has a deep understanding of the meaning of love at a very high spiritual plane. The fixation on sensuality, money and possessions is simply that love, when it can’t go out, is trying to come back in.

In my research I’ve noticed a fair number of dictators are all Taurus. Saddam Hussein was a Taurus. Hitler was a Taurus. Lenin was a Taurus. Emperor Hirohito in Japan during World War II was a Taurus. And we know they must have had some quality of love to be able to inspire their followers like that, but they have this problem with desiring possessions, like other people’s countries.

As noted earlier, when Uranus was last in Taurus we saw the rise of Fascism around the world.

The emphasis that I recognize in these previous historical periods, however, are not only financial changes but often financial changes forcing economic instituted realities which are not serving in a compassionate way the needs of those oppressed or unfairly treated, to be overthrown, whether that be slavery, the British taxation of the American Colonies, or the lack of government involvement towards those suffering from the Depression prior to Roosevelt.

Behind the economic changes is a need for greater love and compassion for one’s fellow man as manifest within economic realities.

This, my friends, is what I believe we have to look forward to in the years ahead. During the previous years of Uranus in Aries, 2011 – 2018, people felt the dynamic fiery will of Aries combined with the revolutionary spirit of Uranus to overturn things and fight for what they want, whether that was the Arab Spring, British ‘Brexit,’ or Donald Trump.

Now, the Uranus in Taurus energies is where some actual concrete financial structural changes are likely to really take hold. And, it seems that when this revolutionary spirit to transform economic realities manifests, and is stimulating fear and hate rather than love and compassion, it has, and can now, lead to a new rise of fascistic tendencies taking concrete hold of material economic realities.

The recent Uranus in Aries revolutionary spirit, however, also brought about the surprise, never expected, success of Bernie Sanders. I do feel that there is the potential for this Uranus in Taurus period to open the way and inspire a completely new ‘New Deal’ and a transformation of the huge divide between the 1% and the 99%.

Indeed, on May 5th 1818, during the month of Taurus, we have the birth of Karl Marx the founder of communist/socialist ideology. So we can assume that behind his economic theories, which may have been a bit materially focused, was a quality of love at a high spiritual level.

In 2020, in addition to Uranus being in the earth sign Taurus, we are also going to have a triple conjunction of Pluto, Jupiter, and Saturn in Capricorn, another earth sign and also related to financial structures.

Obviously, here in America this coincides with the next Presidential election, where I believe the dangers, and the potential, will be tremendous. I pray that we choose wisely.

Blessings,
Steffan Vanel

*Astrology Plus by Hilarion, the book which I am always quoting from and has been out of print for some time, is now available as an EBook on Amazon.

As I am about to write this article I have just come out of a Global Meditation event, staged to help heal the recent energies of trauma created in Las Vegas.

This included helping the souls of those who have had to transition out of their bodies in such an intense, shocking, violent way. And yes, even trying to help the twisted, tortured tragic soul who has created such a hellish experience for himself and others.

I am actually in China right now, so I am looking at this with some distance. From here, however, I can feel the incredulous view of the U.S. the rest of the world holds right now. A view of our repeating on-going traumas of gun related mass shootings, to a President who threatens to destroy another nation before a General Assembly of all of the nations of the world.

Our nation seems to be spinning crazily out of control with violent energies. Hopefully something can be learned from this.

If we look at what is happening to the Astrology chart of the U.S. right now we can see collective lessons we are all being faced with in the community of our nation, and the opportunity to grow from it.

And if we look at the Astrological karma of the shooter, Stephen Paddock, we can also benefit from understanding the implicit in-born energies he was born with and the impending Astrological energies which were coming to bear upon him. From this we can also understand and learn. (His Solar Chart: no birth time or surety about birthplace)

I was initially going to stay in the comfort of my relative distance from the details of this event. But then as I listened to the news on the English language TV station here they announced Stephen Paddock’s birthdate and I got ‘sucked in.’

I knew immediately that Pluto was moving right now into a square to his Sun in Aries. Someone who is Aries, according to Hilarion*, is someone who, in some previous life, risked their own life to come to the rescue of another individual. As a reward for that courageous act they are given an additional energy, physically, mentally or emotionally.

Their challenge is to be able to express this energy in such a way that it does not harm themselves or others through aggressive, violent behavior.

Pluto squaring the Sun is, in any regard, a time when you have to look deep within yourself. A time to see where are you really coming from. Is it from love or is it from fear?

One author described it this way:

Pluto square Sun transit means you are in for a test of your character for a couple of years. The Sun represents your sense of self, your authority and power. The challenging square aspect from Pluto brings extreme forces in the form of other people and circumstances which mean you have to stand up and be counted.

This can be a time of crisis or breakdown as Pluto totally transforms your ego, identity and life direction. Pluto is basically throwing down a challenge so that you master your own personal power. Pluto can be ruthless in its effect so it can make you ruthless in achieving your goals. Power conflicts are common with this transit and these can be not only with authority figures like the law and bosses, but also in personal relationships. (Astrologyking.com)

And I would say as well that when Pluto squares your Sun, if you have not really been owning the energies of your Sun, of your soul essence, who you really are, then Pluto will force you to, one way or another.

Of course there are numerous other Astrological factors at play here in this man’s chart, too numerous for me to want to devote all of the time and energy it would take to elucidate them all.

To briefly hit the main points, however:

Most people know by now that Stephen Paddock’s father was a criminal on the FBI’s top 10 most wanted list. His father, Benjamin Paddock, was in prison for the first three years of his oldest son, Stephen’s, life.

When Stephen was 7 (the time of Saturn squaring his natal Saturn) his father was arrested for a string of bank robberies. The neighbor took Stephen swimming while the BFI searched their house. The neighbor later stated to the newspaper: “We’re trying to keep Steve from knowing his father is held as a bank robber. I hardly know the family, but Steve is a nice boy. It’s a terrible thing.”

When Stephen Paddock was 15, around the time of Saturn opposing his natal Saturn, his father escaped prison and an FBI poster appeared stating that his father had been diagnosed as psychopathic. That has got to be rather intense for a hormonally-charged teenage Aries boy.

In Stephen Paddock’s natal chart, however, he has an Aquarius Moon opposite to Pluto. This is relatable to the apparent attempt to maintain some cool, detached, airy, Aquarian mental atmosphere in his childhood in order to avoid the deep, dark, hidden intense Plutonian reality of the man who, in part, led to his creation in this life. This is how Hilarion describes the affect of this afflicted Aquarian Moon:

The more afflicted the Moon, the more one will find a sense of emotional control and suppression, even coldness, at the heart level…. there tends to be taken from the early home situation a trait of self-control at the emotional level, a dislike of emotional display or extremes, which can produce a difficulty in the individual’s own later home/marriage pattern, particularly if he becomes involved, as he usually does, with someone who requires more in the way of emotional responsiveness than the Aquarian Moon is prepared to give.

That opposing Plutonian reality to that cool detached afflicted Aquarian Moon never went away from the dynamics and reality of his own unconscious psyche.

And those Saturn transits hitting his own Saturn at 7 and 14? Well his natal Saturn was conjunct Neptune and they are both, Neptune and Saturn, opposite to his Sun in Aries.

The Sun, in Psychological Astrology, represents the Father/Male principle in a chart. Saturn difficultly aspecting the Sun creates a likely restrictive energy involving the relationship with the father. Neptune difficultly aspected to the Sun will create some likely illusion, confusion, delusion, and/or victimhood involving one’s relationship with the father. (For example: Barack Obama has a Sun square Neptune, fatherhood experience in his own childhood.)

Stephen Paddock’s Aries Sun was also square to Uranus, thereby creating a sense of the father that would involve sudden ruptures, and a perhaps crazy unconventionality.

Now early in his life Stephen Paddock chose to be an accountant. Not too exciting, intense or aggressive. More like his cool detached Aquarian Moon and some other factors in his chart.

He worked, however, for a company that became Lockheed Martin, a major military defense contractor. I remember when I happened to be visiting Littleton, Colorado, where the Columbine High School mass shooting took place; I discovered that, although it seemed like a rather idyllic peaceful suburban town, most of the parents in that town worked for Lockheed Martin….

Stephen Paddock’s father, Benjamin, liked to gamble and while he was a fugitive he tried once to run down an FBI agent with his car in, Las Vegas….

So, we have Stephen Paddock, a former accountant moving recently to Las Vegas, gambling sometimes $10,000 up to $30,000 in a day, and starting to collect guns while Pluto was in a period of opposing his Uranus, squaring his Sun and moving into a square to his Neptune and his Saturn. Clearly he was trying to somehow embrace the denied, unintegrated intense reality of his father’s presence in his psyche.

Stephen Paddock really needed deep therapy, intensive meditation or Ayahuasca ceremonies to help him with this. Instead, as Pluto started to hit all of this he chose the violent, explosive Aries way of ‘acting it out.’

If Stephen Paddock had lived in a country where citizens have limited or no access to firearms he may have acted out through some explosive fight with his boss or guys in a bar.

In full disclosure, I myself own a firearm and I have killed with it. Even though I am basically a pacifist/vegetarian, I have a 22 rifle with which I once shot a packrat who had been terrorizing my house all night, every night and was uncatchable by humane ‘catch-em alive’ traps, by traps that kill, and even by poison. (He would build a ‘nest’ of twigs, pine needles and nails on top of the poison!)

I finally took out my rifle and ‘got’ him with one shot. And, I was scared to admit the primal sense of relishing that power and control wielded to me by that weapon, temporarily superseding my compassion for that poor creature.

It does enable me to imagine the potential effect of the force of being in possession of a stockpile of weapons and ammunition with some of those weapons made to be fully automatic upon someone with a dissociated, unstable psyche.

On a lighter note, it does remind me of a comedy routine by the British comedian Eddie Izzard where he repeated the often-repeated statement: ‘Guns don’t kill people. People do.’ To which Eddie replied in that enunciated way that the Brits do so well: ‘Well, I think guns have something to do with it. You can’t just point your fingers and go: bang, bang, bang, bang you’re all dead!’

And for those 2nd Amendment people who always say: ‘Well, if someone in the school was ‘packing heat’ this never would have happened.’ Well, in Las Vegas, in a state with both concealed and open-carry weapon laws, the shooter made sure that he had a distance, and a vantage point, and firepower such that all of those likely handguns in the crowd would be totally useless.

It seems that we are possibly heading towards a nation with metal detectors at all large hotels, public buildings, schools and transportation hubs.

Neptune, up in the sky right now, is squaring the Sagittarian Rising/Ascendant of the United States this year. Sagittarius Rising makes it such that you see yourself as, as Hilarion* says: ‘honest, upright and morally strong, whether true or not.’

Neptune impinging that Sagittarian self-image is creating some ‘illusion, confusion, delusion, and victimhood’ challenges in relation to that normally self-righteous self-image. So I think there is some unease with prior convictions, or an added sense of vulnerability in the way we see ourselves, like the potential for Nuclear War.

The potential benefit of this aspect is to dis-identify with those previously held convictions in order to view them with a non-ego-identified perspective.

Just because an Astrological transit creates this opportunity, however, does not promise that one will benefit from it. There is always going to be resistance, a pushback.

For example, we have ex-Fox TV host Bill O’Reilly posting on his blog in the aftermath of this massacre: “This is the price of freedom.”

There have been many responses, such as this one: “No Bill O’Reilly. Listening to you is the (high) price of freedom. Gun massacres are the price of weak gun laws.”

One last, I feel, poignant Astrological Note:

Stephen Paddock’s Moon was in the 25th degree of Aquarius. The Moon of the U.S.A. is in the 28th degree of Aquarius. The Moon at the moment of the attack Sunday night was in the 26th degree of Aquarius.

The Great American Eclipse was at the 29th degree of Leo, within four degrees of exact opposition to the Moons of Stephen Paddock, the USA, and the Las Vegas Massacre.

Now the US Aquarian Moon has only a positive aspect to it natally and I relate that to the positive Aquarian ideals of freedom and equality the nation was founded upon. And it is unfortunate, but tragedy like this does have the potential to bring us all together as one suffering human family.

The Leo potentially oppositional arrogance to that brother/sisterhood Aquarian potential is, however, evidenced by the previously quoted comment by Bill O’Reilly.

In the spirit of my Libran fairness, however, this arrogance was also evident in the comments of a CBS vice president who was fired after she posted on her Facebook page:

“If they wouldn’t do anything when children were murdered I have no hope that Repugs [sic] will ever do the right thing,” Geftman-Gold continued: “I’m actually not even sympathetic bc [sic] country music fans often are Republican gun toters [sic].”

She has since heartily apologized but of course is now facing numerous death threats.

As I say at my lectures, the self-righteous Sagittarian Rising energies of the U.S. are not limited to the Right Wing. We all have a tendency to be rather obnoxious. It is one reason I really enjoy spending a fair bit of time outside of our country.

I would like to end this article with some wisdom from Hilarion. These are his statements about the nature and experience of karma and reincarnation quoted from his book: ‘Nations’ (which is available as an EBook on Amazon.com).

Blessings,
Steffan Vanel

PS: Even though I am in China right now, I’m not too busy work-wise and would be happy to do Skype readings for anyone who would like that. I can also make free phone calls to the U.S.

From the Introduction by Hilarion to NATIONS

For these things are not governed by chance.

Many imagine that pure hazard decrees where one shall be born, and then they blame an unjust God for His cruelty. Others are so appalled by the suffering that they retreat into apathy. Yet others – often prompted by murky religious concepts – think that some sort of ‘plan’ is being worked out, but are not able to explain that plan in a satisfactory manner.

The key that is missing – the link that can unite all of the apparent chaos and suffering into a just and plausible scheme – is the concept that each individual born into the earth is merely taking on a new physical body (one of many) and that his habits and actions in previous bodies have determined the opportunities and the hardships which are his now.

It is deplorable that the main western religions have turned their backs upon this truth – a truth which was part of the credo of most early Christian writers until the Council of Nicea voted to erase all scriptural reference to reincarnation. (Even so, they did not dare to tamper with Jesus’ own statement that John the Baptist was the reincarnation of Elias – Matthew 11:14 and Mark 9:11-13.)

What we are saying is that a proper grasp of the principle of rebirth – and the related principle of karma – not only makes reality understandable, but shows God to be just. We see in the near future a great excitement among humanity as the truth of reincarnation gradually spreads among all peoples. Indeed, numerous individuals already acknowledge this principle without even admitting it to themselves. How many have said, in a moment of exasperation, “What did I ever do to deserve this?” Were they not stating the very law of karma upon which cosmic justice rests? It is the same law which Christ was evoking when He said that those who live by the sword must die by the sword. If this statement were taken to refer only to a single life, it would be manifestly untrue – for have not many murderers died peacefully in their beds? Yet, seen in the light of the rebirth principle, the dictum makes far more sense. It asserts that justice shall follow the murderer even if it does not work itself out in the same life in which the misdeed was committed. In some incarnation, now or later, he himself must ‘die by the sword’.

An interesting facet of this karmic principle is its great effectiveness in teaching humanity to have compassion. Let us explain this point more fully.

Everyone is generally aware of the fact that, in ages past, human beings tended to be very calloused and unfeeling towards each other. At the time of Jesus, for example, there was little respect for human life, hardly any consideration for the suffering of another, and absolutely no feeling of any kind for the animals. Children were regularly beaten, tied up, even hung on the wall to keep them out of an adult’s way. A soldier would think nothing of running his sword through a passing stranger, merely to determine whether the cutting edge were still sharp.

These inhuman attitudes persist even today in many of the darkened places of the earth. And yet, particularly in the western democratic nations, one finds many individuals who are polite and considerate, and who feel it deeply when others around them are suffering. This is the essence of compassion. The word literally means ‘to suffer with’ another. This trait has also been called empathy.

It might surprise the earth’s compassionate individuals to learn that their empathetic nature arises because of their own previous suffering! In effect, what happens when one perceives another person in pain is the rekindling of a memory of one’s own previous painful episodes – whether in this life or in a previous one. Hence what one feels initially is a memory-pain which is evoked by the suffering of the other person.

Some individuals merely feel the empathy – they ‘suffer with’ the person who is undergoing the pain. But others are prompted by their own pain-memories to try to relieve the suffering. Initially the person may do this because by relieving the suffering in the other, the source of his own pain-memory will be removed. But repeated episodes of such help will gradually become ingrained into the individual as a habit of compassionate kindness, and the result will eventually be to incorporate that wonderful trait into the soul itself.

It is thus that the karmic necessity to suffer the same pain we have caused others brings with it ‘an automatic antidote to the kind of attitude that gives rise to the karma in the first place. Think of it as a progression: in the primitive stage, the soul is darkened, insular and lacking in empathy; a life is lived during which pain is caused to others through violent actions. In subsequent lives, the soul inhabits bodies which are made to suffer the same pain which the soul once meted out to others. As a result of that karmic ‘meeting of the self’, the soul stores pain-memories which can be evoked by witnessing similar suffering. Finally, the soul has become so sensitized by pain that it reacts immediately to any scenario in which another is seen to be suffering. At first the soul is simply overcome with ‘com-passion’, i.e. it ‘suffers with’ the other. Perhaps the soul will wish to leave the presence of the sufferer in order to stop its own pain-memories. But at a more mature point, the soul learns to reach out a helping hand to relieve the suffering.